So I wonder, sometimes, if I'm not being too literal with "need".
Yes, I've struggled to know where I should draw the line for a boundary. My standard has been, "If I can survive it, then I have to allow it, so as not to inconvenience the other person." My T says I should consider drawing my lines sooner than that--survival probably isn't the best standard for determining where my boundaries should be. I haven't figured all of that out yet.
Right now, the theory suggests that, ideally, people who care about other people in a healthy way are ok if that person changes, at least as long as the change is a form of growth.
How can someone set a standard to determine if someone else's changes are growth-inducing (honest question)? From my family's perspective, the changes I've been making were supposedly destructive, rejecting, and harmful. It didn't look like growth to them at all. Towards the beginning, my mom wondered if I had become like my former step-dad and had locked down my DH and kids to where they were being abused and weren't allowed to talk to anyone. It took my DH standing up and holding some boundaries with her himself before she admitted she had been suspicious and was relieved that I wasn't isolating my DH and kids. But even after that, she treated me as a malicious threat, even though I never did anything objectively threatening to her--she said my boundaries were the threat, that I had "put up some big, scary walls." So if she was looking for "growth" as the standard for whether or not to accept my changes, she wouldn't have seen what looked like growth to her.
I wonder if the standard for whether to accept someone else's change has more to do with my own needs than with some measure of the value of their changes for themselves? If their new self is still compatible with my life, then we continue in our relationship and allow it to shift as needed. But if their new self doesn't resonate for me and causes problems for me that I'm no longer willing to tolerate, then the relationship falls apart, hopefully in a friendly and respectful way if both parties are fairly healthy, right?
The problem, for me, with that logic is that I wonder where the commitment is. How do relationships weather the tragedies and severe challenges of life if we choose whether to continue a relationship simply based on whether it's still comfortable for me or for the other person? I guess loyalty can still be factored in somehow?
I suppose it's highly likely that what they'd like to see change are things that you, and a lot of us, would see as positive changes.
Yes...the famT said that this current version of me, the one they've been struggling so much with, is actually a healthier me, and the earlier version of me, the one they liked better, was a dysfunctional version of me. I'm curious if that point gets brought up again, because they didn't really respond to it when she said it.
So I learned that other people's distress was MY problem to fix and it was going to go badly if I couldn't fix it and I couldn't. I had to learn to look at this as a trigger of a sort and manage it accordingly.
How are you trying to manage it? I have to shut down my emotions to manage it, and that doesn't allow for being available to the other person much at all.
This is going to take some work to wrap my brain around. (But I believe you!) As far as I can tell, I don't experience a lot of emotions.
I do have emotions...lots of them, and some are very strong. But they're completely cut off from the outside world. Even if I manage to describe an emotion sufficiently that someone else understands what I'm feeling, their response can't get back in to where that emotion lives. I read an article one time that explained that autistic women have an active social center in our brains just like NT women. However, the social center in an AS woman's brain doesn't connect directly with the part of the brain involved in communication. Instead, it's routed
through the logic center before reaching the communication area. So I have emotions and a desire for connection, but none of that can communicate directly with the rest of the world. It all goes through a logic filter first, which takes away the intuitive nature of those experiences and makes them come off as cold, robot-like. Even if I manage to make them appear warm to others, the mental calisthenics required inside subvert any possibility of emotional connection that most people would experience in that moment.
Is there a chance, when people are paying attention, that things come across to the people who know you and care?
People have made comments at times that they notice those things about me...empathy, love, compassion, etc. Those comments nearly always come, though, at a time when I've been putting on an award-worthy performance...where the algorithms in my brain are rocking out procedures and solutions at a high rate of speed with an unusual level of accuracy. I do feel empathy, love, and compassion at times, but what they're seeing is logical output from highly complex mental algorithms. My *real* expressions of authentic love and empathy and all that are almost always missed by the people around me. They don't catch it. It's not something that feels warm and fuzzy for them, even if it's coming from a warm-and-fuzzy place for me. In fact, at times, people are actually offended by my natural expressions of love and compassion...for whatever reason, what I've expressed from truly a place of love, comes across as cold and distant for them. I'm learning in my own head, to identify my natural expressions of love, and then to try to redirect that energy into something that would be recognizable for them, like a translation of some kind. But again, it feels like I'm having to be someone I'm not in order to meet other people's needs. Love becomes emotional caretaking.
You mentioned having almost parental responsibility placed on you when you were very young.
Have you looked into "parentification"?
Yes, I've studied the concept in-depth, even before I started working for the family business. In fact, my mom mentioned the term during a recent family session, as the famT was describing enmeshment and how that gets started in some family systems. I suspect that my mom thinks (based on comments she's made), if I'm still struggling with issues around that dynamic, it's because I've not fully forgiven her and moved on. And if I would just get past that already, the related problems would go away...that there's no way she's continuing to contribute to that dynamic, so anything still going on there is because
I still have some healing work to do.
The very first paragraphs of the preface to family therapy textbooks, state that groups of people ( cultures, nations, societies, tribes etc, and families...) try to isolate their collective dysfunction and neuroses onto one or a few scapegoats
They can feel all normal or superior, and the scapegoat gets pathologized as ill, defective, evil or whatever
Yes, and yet, if I mention this dynamic, I'm afraid they'll turn it around either to "You're just playing the victim by accusing us of scapegoating you" or "Actually, you're the one scapegoating us because you're the one who's actually diagnosed with a disorder, not us." She did something similar with the Karpman Triangle, where she said she was being treated as the bad guy, even though she was really the victim (which is bizarre, because the whole point of understanding the Karpman Triangle is to
get off it, not make sure that someone else is the bad guy so you can be the victim).
At the same time, I understand the dynamic and the felt "need" for scapegoating in the family. Actually, I've watched my other sisters being scapegoated at various times over various issues, and this is also in my notes to address (through a different channel, without using the term scapegoating) at the next family session. My first T identified their scapegoating me very early on and explained the whole "identified patient" thing. And my current T repeatedly points out that problems I blame myself for are really
their problems that I can't fix. However, short of leaving, I haven't found much advice for how to respond to the scapegoating dynamic in a way that is productive.
The diagnosis just gives them additional ammunition to fall back into the family tradition of pathologizing you.
The idea that the dysfunction and it's solution are systemic rather than individual, is absolutely axiomatic to family therapy
This has been a huge part of my resistance to giving them that information. I felt I reached a roadblock, though, where giving them the diagnosis was the only way they might back off of their demands that I go back to being who I used to (pretend to) be with them. And I reached a point where it didn't really matter so much to me
why they backed off, so long as they did, even if they continue to scapegoat me--they were already scapegoating me, so what difference would it make? Now the goal will be to continually redirect the conversation back to the family system issues and away from blaming my AS. On a good day, I think I can do that. The challenge is to manage what's going on in my own head so that I come into each and every conversation from a place of equal standing and strength, rather than a place of inferiority and weakness and victimhood. That's what I'm working on now.
I get the impression that your current family therapist is forgetting that, with her concentrating on getting you to codependantly feed your mother and sister, and her pussy footing around them.
I think my T and I both have some concerns here. The famT has said several times that working with family systems is what she does best. But she's missing some red flags, and then saying that they're not really red flags because I'm just misinterpreting what the others are saying. That could be part of the problem, and also, I think the others are being really subtle in their approach. I'm looking for ways I can identify those issues without becoming argumentative or accusatory or otherwise reactive. It's a very complex problem to solve.
Your communication style developed in interaction with that family system, it didn't develop in isolation from it. And so long as you stay in that system it isn't independent of it.
This is a good point and addresses many levels. I need to think on it.
How much capital is needed to set up in competition with your family and take their customers?
Is it going to be in your interest to carry your sister in the business after your mother retires?
I'm contractually prevented from going out on my own unless we separate willingly, and even then, it could get very messy. That's not my top choice, although I think I would be more likely to survive than they would. I just really don't want to do that if it can be helped.
As for working with my sister after our mom retires, yes, I'm very concerned about how this could play out. The next few family sessions, as my role is newly defined within the relationships, will be critical. That's why it's so important that
I be the one to define myself, and not step back to leave the others to decide for themselves the person I'll be in the team now. In some ways, this imperative is calling out some of the things I've learned in martial arts about standing my ground and protecting my space while not being unnecessarily aggressive, but also not hesitating to respond to intrusion into my space. It's impetus to stay grounded, and I'm looking for ways to help me maintain that stance in the family sessions when the pressure is on.
Incidentally, your family therapist has dropped another bollock, by allowing your sister to play a game of "wooden leg" ( see Eric Berne's "games people play") with her claims of depression
I've studied a lot about manipulation, but never come across that term before. It's accurate, though. And the double standard is markedly obvious to me while bizarrely invisible to the others--I'm the one who's "handicapped", but she's the one who needs help to get her work done because of her depression, even though I'm depressed from trying to do just that for so long, but somehow my depression doesn't count for anything while hers dictates my obligations on the team, regardless of what my personality is or what my own needs are, and despite the fact everyone has already agreed I've always done more than my fair share and she does less than her fair share.
My mom gave me a list of four famTs to choose from when she insisted that we do family therapy. This famT was the only one even remotely qualified for the issues we bring to the table. There's another famT in a nearby city who, according to many sources, is the best at working with these complex family situations. But she has a waiting list, and I'm not sure my mom would be willing to consider someone who wasn't on her initial list of Ts. Maybe at some point I can push the issue, I don't know.
